


Slumber, Sweet Prince

by Cumberbatch Critter (ivelostmyspectacles)



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alcohol, Arranged Marriage, Caretaking, M/M, Wedding Night
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-11
Updated: 2017-08-11
Packaged: 2018-12-14 01:17:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11772459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivelostmyspectacles/pseuds/Cumberbatch%20Critter
Summary: Or don't. Ravus doesn't care.Much.





	Slumber, Sweet Prince

**Author's Note:**

> Soooo this can be read as alternate timeline of the alternate timeline _**[Bound by a Mutual Distaste for One Ardyn Izunia](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11616360)**_ but you don't have to read that one first if you don't want. Basically Noct and Ravus hate each other and were forced to be married. (But seriously read the other one too if you like the idea just sayin)

Noctis, in retrospect, might regret using drinking as a coping method come morning. That was the thought going through Ravus’s head even if he was well into his own drink, and watching Noctis doze off at the table. It wasn’t unexpected. He felt the same, really, wanting to bury himself in drink and forget about the night. Their wedding night. Lord Ravus Nox Fleuret and Prince Noctis Lucis Caelum, bound together under the Six for the good of their kingdoms.

Luna would have done much better as the prince’s wife, despite his inclinations towards the male community. He could have just married her and then… Ravus paused, and looked down at his own drink. Was he seriously about to internally suggest that Noctis could have taken his sister as a wife and then had a lover on the side? He would have killed him if he had done. Apparently, his _husband_ wasn’t the only one with a lowered state of rational thought tonight.

If he had to live a lie with the prince, better him than his sister. He could handle the decision. It might be an atrocity, and it might be misery, but better him than Lunafreya. She had too much on her agenda to begin with.

From across the room, the prince’s advisor, Ignis Scientia, was giving him what could only be described as a beseeching look. And then a glance to the prince himself, and back to Ravus. He looked back at him blankly. Oh, he understood what he was saying. _Take the prince out before he can make a fool of himself._ Did it never cross the advisor’s mind that maybe Ravus _wished_ for the prince to make a fool of himself?

However… Noctis’s family was now one and the same with his. He didn’t care for how the prince’s actions reflected upon himself, but for the sake of Lady Lunafreya, and all of Tenebrae, perhaps it was time to step in.

“If you’ll excuse me,” he said, ducking his head in apology. He left the mingling to a round of happy chatter about Lord Ravus wanting to spend time with the prince. He couldn’t tell them that he did not. The look on Noctis’s face stated much the same when Ravus had put a hand on his shoulder for attention. “I am told we are expected to… retire,” he said. The words felt like they were stuck on his tongue. He couldn’t believe he was saying them. “Lest this raucous celebration continue well into the night.”

Ignis, at the least, looked visibly relaxed about them. “Yes, Highness. It has been a long day. You should retire.”

Noctis looked between Ignis and Ravus, and scowled. _The sentiment is received and reciprocated,_ Ravus thought dryly, but held out his hand. Noctis took it, muttering “let’s go” under his breath, and Ravus had to resist from whisking from the hall. There was still fanfare to be had. He was beginning to hate that, as well.

The prince was past his limit to sobriety, but he wasn’t as unintelligible as Ravus might have expected from the look Scientia had been giving him. He was aware enough to walk without stumbling too much, and to snipe at him as they went. But he was still inebriated. There was a wobble and a slur, and he smelled like the bottom of the proverbial barrel. Or perhaps that was the smell of alcohol on his own breath. He did have a bit of a headache. (The question was, was it because of excess, or the celebration in general? He wondered.)

For a moment, he envied Noctis as the young prince fell face first onto his bed, sighing as he sank into the mattress. He could do with a rest. It had been a trying day. Mild envy turned to curiosity, and then exasperation when he realized that the prince had already dozed off.

“Noctis.” Nothing. But by the Six, it must have been nice to sleep so easily. And so deeply. “Prince Noctis,” he repeated, loudly, and a little more sharply. He only made an unintelligible noise and Ravus sighed. “You’re trying to sleep in your formal attire. Your advisor will have both of our heads.” And still nothing. Not even a noise of acknowledgment. How frustrating.

If the prince wouldn’t listen, he would take his own statement to heart. The jacket went first, thrown over the back of the chair. The gloves he’d shoved in his pocket earlier in the night tossed over the top of it and then he pulled the ribbon from his hair. He shook his head to displace the strands that immediately fell into his face and tugged the knot in his tie loose. There. That was better.

Fingers searching to undo the buttons on the waistcoat, he let himself sink into the chair without reserve. There was no one to notice, and he was tired. Leaning until his back hit the back of the chair so that he was slumped down in it, hands falling to his lap, head tipping back onto the chair as well. A wedding. To the prince of Lucis, nonetheless. After everything that had happened, how had _he_ ended up married to him? How had _he_ ended up married at all? Eyes had always been on _Luna_ , although that had been to his indignation as well. There was no possible happy outcome to any scenario, was there? Of course not.

The sigh was too loud, and it felt more emotional than it should be have been (which was to say: not at all) but he was in the prince’s bedroom and the prince was already asleep. None of it mattered. He propped his head on his hand, and permitted his eyes to close.

He must have dozed, because when he opened his eyes again, the hand on the plain clock sat atop Noctis’s dresser was twenty minutes ahead of where he had last seen it. He half startled upright, gripping the armrest of the chair to push himself up straight. Likely, the well-wishers downstairs were still straggling out. He had been planning to give them an hour, but he hadn’t banked on falling asleep so quickly. Gods, but it really had been a long day.

A glance was cast towards the prince was more out of reflex than desire. The double take was more out of instinct, seeing as how Noctis hadn’t moved. Perhaps it had been only twenty minutes, but the man couldn’t be comfortable in either clothes or position. Had he really been so inebriated? Or… perhaps something was wrong?

He would sooner sell his soul to Lucis than to admit he was worried. Except the day had been celebrating said selling of his soul to Lucis, hadn’t it? Ravus groaned quietly and pushed himself up. On his head it would fall. Sister would be devastated and their treaty between kingdoms nullified. If Prince Noctis were going to die of asphyxiation from the cape he was still wearing, at least let Ravus be the one to strangle him with it. (No, not truly. Mostly.)

He was about to take his shoulder and shake him roughly awake, and then he… didn’t. Somehow, he was reminded of Luna, fast asleep and slumped over her desk. Sometimes, he would wake her up with a piece of paper stuck to her cheek. Sometimes, he would pick her up and carry her to bed, tuck her in like they weren’t key players in Eos’s story, as if they were normal brother and sister.

He didn’t consider the prince like a brother– this marriage would be even more strange if he did, by the _Six_ – but merely thinking of time in Tenebrae prevented him from startling Noctis awake as he had intended. Instead, he sighed, passed a hand over the throbbing ache beneath his forehead, and reached down to carefully sweep the cape from Noctis’s shoulders. One, and then the other, shifting the decorative cords aside so that they really were not in danger of strangling the prince. It seemed the cape was still fastened in the front, which made it exponentially more difficult to remove. The clasp, at least, if he remembered correctly from the glance of details he had taken in during their dance, was a simple one.

He had barely even touched the prince in an attempts to feel out the clasp when Noctis startled awake and, in turn, startled Ravus. Gods, he was too tired for this, and the headache was making it difficult to focus. Noctis stared at him blearily. Ravus looked down at him, raising an eyebrow, and Noctis looked at Ravus’s hand still hovering near the clasp and then scrambled to sit up.

“What are you doing?!”

“Nothing!”

“I’ve been drinking– and I’m not consenting! Ever! If you do– I’ll–”

Ravus jerked his hands back as though electrocuted. Truly, he felt a little ill. That was no small feat. “No!” A step back for good measure, distance between them as Noctis planted a hand on the bed and looked prime to summon a sword. Or to flee. “No,” he repeated lowly, and then hissed “What kind of person do you take me for?”

“What kind of person looms over an unconscious person?!”

“I was…” He couldn’t groan out loud, except he did just then. It felt acutely satisfying to give voice his frustration. “You fell asleep in your formal wear. That _cape_ ,” he spat. “I have no desire to have been married to you, do you _honestly_ think I wish to _have_ you??” He spun for the chair again, ready to damn the consequences of storming out of the Citadel even with an audience watching. He flopped into the chair instead, glowering at nothing and everything. What a horrible night. What a horrible chain of events that had been set into motion so many years ago with this betrothal. “Worry not for your virtue, Noctis. I’m not the monster you make me out to be.”

Yes, he had done reprehensible things in his lifetime and he expected that he would do a fair bit more of it before his time in this world came to pass, but he did not stoop to every level of depravity. He stooped to few levels, actually. He had a sister, _for God’s sake_ – imagining any level of deplorable act happening to her boiled his blood just to think about it. He would never be that kind of person, no matter what his _husband_ assumed.

Further proof that they knew each other not at all.

“… Ugh, sorry.” Ravus turned his head back, and Noctis was fumbling the clasp on the cape. “You were just… there, I dunno,” the prince continued, and finally shed the damned cloak onto the blankets. “Startled me.”

The prince was apologizing to _him_? Wonders would truly never cease.

“I don’t need your apology, Your _Highness_.”

“Still, uh… Luna says you’re… good.” He made a face. “Better than you seem like, anyway.”

What was Luna _telling_ the man? Ravus inhaled slowly, and then breathed out with what might have been dry amusement if he let it. He didn’t. “Amazing. She says the same about you.”

Noctis _did_ laugh, although he still sounded tired. His jacket joined his cape on the bed. “She talks about both of us behind our backs, doesn’t she?”

So it seemed. “Her intentions are true,” he said instead, leaning back in his chair.

“Yeah.” The waistcoat was flung aside, and then the prince crawled up the few feet to the pillows at the head of the bed. “I know.”

Ravus watched as Noctis flopped into the mess of blankets and pillows without a word; at least he had managed to get properly in bed, sans the most uncomfortable clothing. That, Ravus expected, was a minor miracle in itself.

Sleep must have been quick in coming, because Noctis said nothing else. Ravus had half a mind to find someone who would have a curative for the pounding in his head, but he didn’t know his way around and didn’t know who that would be, anyway. And if he was leaving the room, he may as well leave entirely. Just a while longer, and he would be free.

 

 

 

When he finally deemed it safe to leave, Ravus was more than glad to go. He gathered up his things and glanced back at the unmoving Noctis. Oh, but he must have moved at some point; the blanket had fallen away from his body. Ravus could recall, vaguely, Regis telling him about Noctis’s sleeping habits following the Marilith attack, how the boy had spent longer in bed and had less energy. How he had never seemed to grow out of it. How he walked with a limp, sometimes. His injury, the extended stay, the attack on Tenebrae… that day…

Sins of the father shall not be repeated by the son. _We’ll see_ , he thought, and stepped over enough to settle the blankets back over Noctis before he left the prince to his slumber.


End file.
